


Boundless As The Sea

by deathmallow



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Some Fluff, Some angst, soft (tm) murder, which pretty much sums up garcia flynn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-19 01:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15499065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: Five times that Garcia Flynn thinks "I love you", and one time Lucy Preston says it.





	Boundless As The Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evillittlethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evillittlethings/gifts).



> Title from Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene 2: _My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. The more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite._

**Danilbek: Grozny, Chechnya, 1995**  
They’d brought his rucksack with him, so to avoid staring at the peeling paint on the yellow walls, by four days in Garcia had reread the entirety of War and Peace, and A Farewell to Arms, trying to ignore the blood spatters that had wicked in from the edge on some of the pages in rusty dark blots.

“You’re begging for reading material, not pain medication?” the nurse asked dubiously, eyeing him as if not quite sure what to make of some crazy Croatian fighting with the partisans, and who didn’t have the good sense to beg for morphine.

“The pain’s fine.” It wasn’t, but he knew from Vukovar and Sarajevo that the painkillers would run out first. They were barely keeping the lights on here in the hospital some days after the Russians had shelled the hell out of this area last year. Better they keep the morphine they had left for the ones in rougher shape than him right now. The fire in his guts had died down dramatically, though apparently the shrapnel fragment that nailed him in the abdomen would leave him with a wicked scar. “Just...not used to being idle.” 

Not used to not being able to fight, not since he started five years ago, and when one fight died down there was always another, one in need of someone who could fight with the downtrodden, the patriots, the ones seeking to throw off the yoke of oppressive government. It seemed _so very American_ when he was fifteen to fight for the freedom of his homeland, and then to continue to fight alongside others seeking to seize that same choice, even as he never heard a word of his mother’s English spoken. Student of history that he’d been, he reminded himself too that the Southern states thought it _so very American_ too to rebel against the government, and that the line between patriotic rebellion and treason often depended only on who won, and how much the self-determination fought for was itself built on oppression or not. 

He lay in a hospital bed with his guts carefully stuffed back into place, and listened to the explosions in the distance. Miles away, if his practiced ear was any judge. He was twenty, had been at war for over four years now, and the thought that most men his age were university students concerned mostly with drinking and fucking their way through their days and nights, that even many of his fellow soldiers were like that in the spaces in between sudden bouts of violence and fear made him suddenly dizzy. Was that really all there was to life? Fighting and fucking and drinking, bluster to cover the fear? 

“You’re not allowed to die of boredom, Miha,” and he couldn’t help but grin at hearing that familiar voice behind the nurse. He’d been known as Mihajlo, Miha to friends, for years now. Never heard Garcia except when talking on the phone to his mom. Easier to not walk around Balkan wars with his Latino-American first name and Irish surname. “Not after we dragged you all the way here, and me with only one good arm, when you’re so fucking big that dragging you anywhere is a _production_.” Danilbek’s pale brown eyes danced with mischievous good humor. He sat down on the edge of the bed, smelling of smoke and tobacco, obviously unshaven for a few days to boot.

“What can I say, I ate my Wheaties as a kid.” Trying to sit up, he gave it up for a bad job with a grunt of pain. His much-abused abdomen told him it was a terrible idea.

“Sorry?”

 _Jebote_. Yeah, the American joke didn’t translate well. “Nothing, nothing. How are you?” He gestured to the bandage wrapped around Danil’s left bicep. 

Danil waved his right hand dismissively. “Doing fine. I’ll be back out to the mountains in a few days. Gathering supplies while I’m here, of course.”

“You’re heading back out there without me watching your back when you do something stupid?” He meant it as a lighthearted quip, but it probably came out whiny, like a kid complaining at being left behind. But he couldn’t help it--the thought of his best friend out there, taking risks like he did, the thought of never seeing him again? Too much to bear. Worse than the injury, worse than the interminable recovery.

“Fine, I’ll keep the heroics to a minimum for a few weeks. Your Dynamite is fine, by the way.” Danil shook his head, incredulous, raking his good hand through his untidy mop of brown hair, leaving it in messy, hedgehog-like spikes. “You were halfway delirious, and yet you kept asking about the horse.”

“Dynamite’s gotten me through enough tight spots,” he argued. He’d come to rely on that horse, love her, trust her implicitly. She’d saved his life as often as any of his brothers and sisters in arms had. “Besides…”

“Besides, you’re a soft touch. Can’t stand it when animals and kids and little old ladies are in danger or in pain. Come on. We all know it.”

“I fight as well as any of--”

“I didn’t say it was an insult, did I?” Danil flashed that knowing grin. “She’s fine. I’m keeping an eye on her for when you come back, OK?” There was something strange, all at once soft and intent in his expression as he looked at Garcia, his hand landing on Garcia’s shoulder with a clumsy pat.

His best friend came all the way to see that he was all right, and knew that he’d worry about Dynamite most of all, would care for her personally until he came back to rejoin the fight. Something clicked into place, and he couldn’t breathe for a moment, as if the world tilted just so slightly on its axis, but enough to throw him completely off balance. _Oh._ He’d known he didn’t fall in and out of love and lust like most people seemed to do, but--so this was what it was like. He was clueless, like flipping open the _matura_ exam booklet to find it written entirely in Ancient Greek or something. Not that he’d ever taken his _matura_. Self-made as she was, his mother’s disappointment at his failure to follow through and get the opportunities from education still hurt, caught in him like the barb of a fishhook. 

He’d wondered sometimes if he’d read something in Danil’s looks and words, or if it was just a personal quirk, or some Chechen cultural thing he hadn’t figured out yet. But--God, it was impossible. Danil’s faith, his nation, would call him an abomination, maybe execute him or both of them. At least in Croatia it would be legal, but it wasn’t like walking down the streets of Split, hand in hand, would make them many friends either. Probably only the fact that two men over six feet tall with the wary air of soldiers weren’t easy prey would keep them from getting the crap beat out of them in an alley. He couldn’t think of it as wrong, though. How could it be wrong to love someone like this, when the two of them fought together, protected each other, cared about each other?

But he couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t look at Danil now and not think of taking that work and war roughened hand in his, of that lithe and agile body, his ferocity in defending the helpless, his laughter, his guitar music, his passion for the idea of freedom. All of it was painted in different hues now. _I love you_ , he thought, but wouldn’t allow himself to say, and the realization was both mingled despair and wonder.

~~~~~~~~~~

**Lorena: Khartoum, Sudan, 2005**  
The knock woke him from a bleary half-sleep, light starting to peek in through the gap of the curtains, and he padded to the door of the tiny room in the boarding house. Lorena stood there in the darkened hallway. “Time is it?” he managed, thick-tongued, and struggling for a moment to separate the English from the Croatian in his mind and jam the divider firmly in place between the two.

“Seven thirty.” 

“You don’t sleep in on a Sunday, given half the chance?” he joked, coming more awake, leaning on the doorpost now and trying to not grin too stupidly. 

“Better to go out early before the heat really starts baking.”

That was true, and he had to admire the practicality in her, as usual. “Lorena, I’m really starting to think there’s something to them making sure I go with you on these supply runs…you think they know?”

“Not many fools here with either the Red Cross or the UN peacekeepers. And given I’m pretty sure you couldn’t make it more obvious, Garcia, that I’ve got a six foot four Croatian following me around like a puppy?” She returned his grin. “I’m going to Mass at the cathedral. Are you coming with me or not?”

He groaned, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “Are you asking for an escort, _Gospodinja_ Vailiatis?” It wasn’t a bad idea. She was fierce, but she was a woman, and a woman alone wasn’t always the best thing to be.

“Escort, and besides, you should come with me.” That smiled suddenly sharpened to a wicked edge, and hands on her hips, her hazel eyes on his, they both knew she had him. As if she didn’t have all of him, heart and soul, and he didn’t mind one bit. “Do you want me to have to tell your mother, when I finally _do_ get to meet her, that you haven’t been to Mass in an age? Maybe you have the excuse of there not being a church in a lot of places, but you could hardly have missed St. Matthew’s when we drove in, even with as dusty as the windshield got. Tall thin spires, big rose window, looks kind of like a fairy tale castle?”

“All right, then, all right.” Pushing off from the doorframe, he held his hands out in a gesture of surrender. “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and Maria Flynn’s approval.” He had a somewhat contentious relationship with God sometimes, especially given it was his father who was the more insistent one about church after Tito was gone, not his mother, and given all the things he’d seen in his years at war. But yes, there was something out there beyond random chance. Besides, he couldn’t turn down the chance to spend more time with her. Stolen moments in bed, yes, but everything--even a visit to the marketplace with her was its own distinct pleasure. 

Standing next to her in the worn pew, listening to her sing the hymns and seeing the light in her eyes of someone who actually believed, who saw the ugliness of the world every week they were out here, and still charged out to fight it with the weapons of medicine and kindness and belief, whose faith only strengthened her rather than giving way like a dented shield, he couldn’t help but lean in towards her. Ostensibly to share the hymnal she tipped towards him for better viewing, but mostly because he couldn’t help but want to be closer to a bright candle like her. _God must love you as much as you love him to have made you the person you are. And I love you, and I swear I’ll marry you if you’ll have me._

~~~~~~~~~~

**Iris: Split, Croatia, 2014**  
He cleared the room, checking every corner and every hiding place, and turned, squeezing the trigger of the water gun. The water squirted out, a whiff of lemon oil tickling his nostrils. That had been Lorena’s contribution almost a year ago, claiming that lemon warded off monsters.

He’d teased her in bed later that night, _I thought that was scurvy that lemons helped? Just wait. She’ll hit her pirate phase soon._

_Then her daddy will very happily play Pirate King for her, I’m sure._

_Yarrrr, you mangy seadogs._ She’d burst out laughing, and that was one of the better moments between them since he got back from Damascus all screwed up.

But it was September now, and things were better. They’d come through the worst of it. If sometimes the thought of another child sometimes froze him in his tracks, he did his best to remember that there was good in the world. Things worth fighting for, things worth his belief in the goodness of the future. That his daughter, and any other child they might have, weren’t going to be in school and hit by missiles. He’d put his faith in the future once by marrying Lorena, by choosing to have a child with her. He could do so again. Time to start doubling down on that plan to finish the last of his degree, go to Baltimore, start teaching. Once he got done with this mission in Minsk, figured out what the deal was with those odd corporate financials he’d been asked to find and investigate for the NSA. 

“No monsters,” he told Iris, turning to see Lorena sitting there beside her, smiling at him with that conspiratorial expression. “Safe to go to sleep, OK?”

“But I’m not tired,” she insisted, and he could already see Lorena’s formidable will at work there. Once she got over being afraid of the monsters in the dark, she’d probably insist they were misunderstood and befriend them. And they’d feature in her playtime fantasies along with the aliens and princesses and unicorns and cowboys that she imagined up in the rocketship-slash-princess tower of the house in Baltimore. She’d surprised him constantly ever since she was born. He’d put his faith in Lorena and his own ability to be better than his father, and in their future, and look what had happened. That faith had been rewarded, hadn’t it? So he could do so again, terrifying as it still sometimes was. 

He laughed, going over, leaning down to her. “Oh, what else is new?” Lorena asked with a smile.

She looked up at him, eyes suddenly wide and suspicious. “But what if the monsters come while I’m sleeping?”

“Well, then, I’ll protect you, OK?” He reached out, gently booped her cute little upturned nose--she’d gotten Lorena’s nose, not his own Slavic beak, and thank God for that. “I’ll always protect you.” He would never be the monster in the night that she feared, like he’d feared his own father. “Besides, you’re five now. Getting very grown up. Mom and I will start teaching you to kick those monsters’ butts very soon, mm?” She was old enough to start taekwondo, and it would harness some of that inexhaustible energy to boot.

Tucking her in, he leaned down and kissed her forehead, brushing a silky wisp of hair aside. She turned on her side, murmuring, “ _Laku noč, Tata._ Good night, Daddy.” Already determined to express herself in both Croatian and English whenever she could, like he had as a boy. The best of both worlds, his mother had called him, and she would be the same. He couldn’t help but smile at it. 

“ _Gute Nacht, Liebchen._ We’ll get you started on German soon enough, eh?”

“She’s five years old, Garcia, there’ll be time for languages still,” Lorena said dryly, elbowing him in the ribs, but she chuckled as she did it. He smiled at her, feeling the slow caress of her hand on his arm. Iris slept soundly once she finally dropped off--a talent from her father, it seemed. Maybe he and Lorena they should see if this time they could make that second child happen. Three months of no luck so far, but no surprise. It took nearly a year for Iris, especially with him away for some of it, and they were that much older now. But things seemed right tonight, like the world was soft and forgiving. Like he could believe that luck was on their side, tonight and beyond. Like maybe this was the time to allow himself to have those plans he’d never fully realized, the future he’d left abandoned twenty-five years ago as a child gone to war. Let someone else take up the fight, because he’d seen if nothing else, there would _always_ be another fight, another war, another people or nation desperate to win their freedom. His wife and his daughter and that desperately hoped-for son or daughter deserved to have everything he had to give. They’d earned their share of peace, hadn’t they?

Turning off the light, heading back for the door, he looked back for a moment, seeing Iris’ tiny form huddled up under the covers, clutching her stuffed unicorn. Realized once again, he was luckier than he deserved, that she and Lorena had helped make this house where he’d grown up into a happy place rather than the one of mingled light and shadow that he couldn’t wait to escape at fifteen. She’d become somebody who made the world better, and he couldn’t wait to see it. _I love you, mačkica._

~~~~~~~~~~

**Lucy: Mexico City, Mexico, 2019**  
The pain wasn’t that terrible. He’d had worse in his day. Yes, he’d hurt like hell in the morning, assuming he lived that long. But the thick feeling in his head like being wrapped in a wool blanket had worn off hours ago as the chloroform worked its way out of his system. There were no deep, unsettling sensations that told him he had to worry about internal bleeding.

His hands were the worst, having gone from pins and needles to completely numb. If he got out of this-- _if_ \--he’d have to congratulate Wyatt on teaching them all to pick locks, and for Emma not checking his shirt cuffs, where they all carried some kind of bobby pin or the like. After he’d worked his way out of the handcuffs, not quite quickly enough to attack, she’d taken no chances and used zip ties. Clever. No chance of working any slack into it like he’d have managed with rope. But she’d done them so tight he’d lost circulation a while ago.

Small pains, numb hands. Mostly he had the overpowering helpless rage at being used as bait. Because he had to believe at this point he’d earned his place, and they wouldn’t simply cut him loose. Even if they would have, Lucy wouldn’t let them. He couldn’t help but smile to himself, imagining her ferocity in arguing it, a proud tigress in a five foot five body.

With his hands behind him, he couldn’t get leverage to try and snap the zip ties. She hadn’t bothered to blindfold him. The graffiti, the dusty stained glass windows, the pew he’d used to try to sleep on when he could sleep at all--they both knew this place as well as the backs of their hands. The ruined chapel he’d run to when they raided the warehouse in Oakland, first with Anthony, and then with Emma. He’d escaped, knowing going across international borders would make any DHS/NSA operation more of a bitch to unleash, and that justifiably came back to bite him now. Because Emma must know it too. But they wouldn’t bother bringing in the SWAT team or the like. And an international border, just like the timeline, wouldn’t stop the Lifeboat.

“I figured the old hideaway would suit,” she said, standing in front of him. “Those were the days, huh?”

“The days you were lying through your teeth to me and gathering information the whole time, yes,” he said dryly. “Very clever.”

“Aw, still bitter that I outsmarted you?” She leaned down, patting his cheek with her hand. “Your poor ego.”

He looked up at her and smiled. “We’ve beaten you how many times? We took Jessica, _your_ best operative, by giving her a much better offer.” His smile deepened, and he echoed her mocking tone with biting precision. “Your poor ego.” 

He could see from the flash of temper in her green eyes that he’d scored a point, and the punch to his jaw confirmed it. He couldn’t help but laugh at that, both of them knowing he’d proved the point with her lashing out in anger. Whatever rejoiner she might have had went unsaid as the crash of breaking glass led right into the burst of a smoke grenade. Old hand as he was at a raid, he immediately threw himself sideways as hard as he could, tipping the chair over. His right shoulder, taking the brunt of the force, protested. Without the heat of fire the smoke particles, heavier than air, sank down to the floor, and he tried to bury his face in his shoulder, breathe shallowly. But it was better than sitting there, tied to a chair, when the bullets started flying, as they immediately did. Several silenced pistols going off rapid-fire, and he heard a grunt, feminine in its pitch, followed by the tense whimpers of someone steeling themselves against the pain, and then Lucy yelling his name, sounding frantic.

Five seconds or five minutes later, he wasn’t sure, it was Lucy who found him, knelt beside him, cut his bindings loose. “She’s gone,” she told him, helping keep him from collapsing to the floor flat on his face. “Emma’s gone. Rufus heard the Mothership jump.”

“If we could see,” he couldn’t help but give a grunt of effort himself, pushing up to his feet and swaying at his stiff joints protesting at it, “there would be blood on the floor. Not mine. I heard it. _Someone’s_ shot nailed her, and by the sound, she’s not just shrugging off an arm graze.” 

“Good,” Lucy said savagely. “We’ve got her on the run, and we can follow her and end this.” She got an arm around him, making herself into a ridiculously tiny crutch for him to slump over like she had back in Chinatown. “Can you walk?”

“Sure as hell can try.” After the first few stumbling steps, his muscles loosened, and by the door he felt mostly all right, except for his hands. He’d have to hope his hands recovered sensation by the time they got to wherever Emma had run next. Much as he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her tightly, this wasn’t the time for a tender moment, given the chase was on. But she’d come for him, fought her way fearlessly on this raid, fought to end Rittenhouse. She’d grown into that formidable, magnificent strength in two and a half years. Squeezing her tightly for a moment, not for support but only for the need for the embrace, he couldn’t help but think, _I love you._ Whatever happened next with their cornered Rittenhouse fox likely at her most dangerous, he was a lucky man to have fought by her side, to loved her, and been loved by her.

~~~~~~~~~~

**Amy: Paris, France, 2020**  
God rewarded faith. That was what all the stories, the sermons, the hymns all liked to make clear in black and white. _Believe, throughout it all, and you’ll be rewarded._ He’d believed, in his day. Believed many things, many of them proven wrong in the end. Serbians weren’t monolithic monsters, at least not any more than anyone else in that war. Being bi didn’t mean he was going to hell, and Chechnya could be both righteous in its fight to be free of a cruel Russian yoke, and inhumanly backwards in how it treated its own people. Sometimes mercy truly was greater than might. Believed, and sometimes lashed out in disappointment, frustrated that his sheer _belief_ somehow wasn’t enough to win the fight, to save a righteous cause, to bring Lorena and Iris back, to convince Lucy that they were meant to fight side-by-side. Faith was supposed to be rewarded, right? _Where are you, God, and why have you forsaken me?_

But that was a child’s type of belief. It wasn’t a math equation, _me + faith = reward_ , or like sticking a quarter in the gumball machine. Truly believing, and accepting that things were meant to be, that somehow all the sweetness and bitterness mingled had led him here, was sometimes one of the hardest things to do. He’d had two years of testing his faith every day, waiting to steal the Mothership, waiting to get revenge on Rittenhouse, waiting to meet Lucy again. Naive as he’d been, seeing her look at him with such loathing and fear, flinging the accusation of killing his own family, had shaken him to the core. He’d had to try to find the faith again to keep going, despite the terrible things he was doing and trying to justify, despite Lucy standing in his way instead of helping. But in the end, they’d become the team she’d promised in Sao Paulo, in every way. If he’d given up and walked away from the Mothership when Lucy rejected him, disappeared forever as he easily could have, if he’d blown himself up in DC, if he’d accepted defeat and prison while Rittenhouse still survived, he would never have had any of this, both the highs and the lows. 

But he’d had to find a new kind of faith, and this one was quieter, but equally hard after Lorena and Iris. Believing too that this would last, that he wouldn’t wake up one day and find Lucy gone, or wake to the sound of silenced gunshots again. Faith wasn’t a single act of belief. It was an everyday test, against all odds and obstacles.

So now here he was. He looked at Lucy, smile radiant, watching Gabriel playing with Amy on the green summer grass, laughing at her chubby little toddler hands reaching up to grab his hair, trying to crawl all over him like a tiny hyper-energetic monkey. His brother, his daughter, his wife: a life he’d never imagined possible.

No, Amy would never be Iris. But then, Lucy wasn’t Lorena. He didn’t need them to be. When push came to shove, despite his terror, despite the corner of his heart that would always grieve a bright and brave little girl who’d never grow old, a woman with the passion to change the world and the most annoying hum, he’d managed what his mother and father never had. He’d lost everything, but he’d let them go, because love didn’t mean clinging jealously to ghosts. He’d believed that it could be good again, that love was as infinite as the universe, that what he had to give wasn’t diminished by others having been in his life first. He could love enough for all of them.

Lucy had taught him that first, yes, put faith in him until he could once again put faith in himself. He still remembered saying as bluntly as he could in 1780 that he could never be a husband and father again, and that even then, she had believed he still could be a good man, had loved him despite seeing the worst and darkest parts of him. But it was Amy that finally chased away the last of the fear. What she’d become, he didn’t know, but they would tell her someday about all of it, about Rittenhouse, about Iris, and he would make certain to tell her how loved she was, often enough, with enough certainty, that she would never need doubt that she was loved, wanted, cherished. That she wasn’t and never would be a replacement. _I love you for who you are, and I always will._

Lucy came over, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. “Think Amy could use a little sister or brother?” she murmured, words a little tentative. She’d grown up with a sister, so of course it meant a lot to her.

Lorena had asked him once, and he’d been too scarred by so many dead children he’d seen, too afraid and cynical about the world. Too unable to put faith in the future at that moment. It should be even harder now, given he’d lost a child himself, that the world had proven it could take his daughter from him in a matter of seconds. And yet--Jiya had told them, and he’d seen, that to move beyond loss of a spouse, a child, was something they’d dealt with so often in history. That it didn’t make them lesser to try again, to believe in that future. It took particular courage. So...faith. Take it day by day. He looked at Amy, chubby-cheeked and smiling in the sunlight, her dark eyes full of delight. Looked at the brother his mother had mourned all her life. “Well, we’re not getting any youn--” She glowered at him, and he smiled sheepishly. “Yes.”

~~~~~~~~~~

**Garcia: Lima, Peru, 2022**  
She’d always been aware of how dorkishly excited she got talking about historical sites, but she couldn’t help it. “And we’ll have to check out the Nazca Lines and Machu Picchu, of course...”

Garcia snorted with laughter, sitting back in his chair, interlaced fingers casually put behind his head, that old cocky smirk on his face. “I had to talk her out of wanting to, ah, take the Mothership on another hop to go back and see exactly how they made the Nazca Lines.”

“They’re an _anthropological treasure_ ,” she replied defensively. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t be fascinated by it too. Historical engineering? Garcia, _please_. You were even more excited than me.”

“History nerds in the wild,” Rufus said with a snicker, sitting back in his seat and taking a sip of his beer. “Besides, he could pull it off. Not like he hasn’t stolen the Mothership before,” nodding towards Garcia. Garcia gave a dramatic roll of his eyes in return, and threw a crumpled napkin at Rufus.

Though she had to admit, “Fine, the fact that there’s a thousand-year window for their creation kind of was an argument against it too.” Trying to pinpoint any particular day the Nazcas were working on it would have been difficult. Not to mention the Mothership and Lifeboat were both locked up tight.

“Me, I’m here for the chilcanos and chill,” Wyatt said, raising his glass with a grin. 

“I miss the Lifeboat,” Jiya said. “We’d have been here in, like, five minutes rather than suffering airline hell.”

She couldn’t help but smile, hearing them all smoothly slide back into the comfortable banter. Three years since they took down Rittenhouse for good. They’d all come home from war, picked up the threads of their lives. Called each other regularly, sent pictures, especially of the growing Time Team brood. Jess and Wyatt’s Stella, Hannah and Sherwin. Jiya and Rufus’ Idris, and she and Jessica had exchanged knowing glances when they noticed Jiya drinking Inca Kola. She and Garcia had Amy and Ethan, and, well, they’d decided one more would be a good thing. No luck just yet, but she hoped for another girl. She imagined all of them tumbling over each other like puppies upstairs in the Logans’ hotel room, under the watchful eyes of their Grandma Denise, and Uncle Connor. Probably being spoiled rotten, and Denise and Connor had chased them downstairs with a laugh, told them to leave them alone with the babies. 

“So I’m due in six months,” Jiya said, casual as anything.

“Knew it!” Jessica crowed. “Congratulations. Hoping for a boy or girl?”

“Either,” Rufus said, reaching over and taking Jiya’s hand in his, fingers tightly interlaced. Given before Chinatown the two of them hadn’t been into the PDA--they’d left that to Wyatt and Jess--they’d joked about the intense hand holding some in the days after Rufus came back, only in the fond way that family could. But she couldn’t blame Jiya for wanting to cling to him, and Rufus for wanting to hold on to life and love with everything in him.

They made it a point to get together at least once a year, take a trip somewhere because after the places they’d been and the things they’d seen, making it a point to go explore more of the world around them felt strangely right. They couldn’t hole up in California again and pretend it all away. Their eyes had been opened. The wonder, the diversity, and the horror, was out there in the twenty-first century too. Garcia and Wyatt had seen it before the time machines, but they’d all become soldiers since, felt the weight of responsibility to bear witness and be good citizens of their world. To raise good citizens of the world too, to raise their kids as an act of faith in the future. For everyone who said the world had gotten worse, that there had been “the good old days”, they could say otherwise. Things throughout history had come and gone, but so much was the same. It was only all better publicized now.

“Next round’s mine,” Garcia said, pushing back his chair and getting up. “Wyatt’s being predictable and having another chilcano, one for Rufus, a pisco sour for Jess...Jiya?”

“ _Chica de frutilla_.” The Spanish rolled off Jiya’s tongue easily after her years in the 1880s with Mexicans, among others, walking into the Bison Horn. “It’s finally not weird to be the one ordering drinks rather than serving them,” she quipped.

Lucy beckoned him over with a crooked finger, and he leaned down, one hand on her shoulder. She reached up and covered his hand with hers for a moment, view shielded from the rest of them. They’d always kept this between them, because it was theirs, much as she cherished and loved all the rest of them as family. “ _Volim te_ ,” she told him, so softly that only he could have heard. The softness in his eyes and his smile at hearing it still made her heart skip a beat, and his thumb swept over her hand in a momentary caress.

Eyes still soft, his smile suddenly gained a sharp and wicked edge. “ _Ndiyakuthanda_.”

She’d never heard that one before. “Swahili?”

“Xhosa.” The grin deepened. “Your move, Lucy.” He took his hand from her shoulder and turned back towards the bar, giving a jaunty wave towards the rest of them. 

“You two are sometimes incredibly weird,” Rufus muttered. Shaking her head, she pulled out her phone, resolving to look up Lakota or something to get Garcia back for that, preferably tonight once the kids were asleep.

They’d forged the life in high danger and sometimes at high cost, but maybe that made the love between all of them the fiercer. But sitting there at peace in the Peruvian summer sunshine with her family, living her life with the man she loved and their kids, with Rittenhouse consigned to the dust of forgotten history, she couldn’t wish it any other way.


End file.
